During a recent interview with Junkee, Maynard James Keenan talked about that album, and said:

“There are riffs on the new album that Adam had before I was even in the band. The last track, ‘7empest’ [pronounced Tempest], the main body of the first chunk of the song is a verse and then a really heavy recurring riff, something I came up with in [the time signature of] 21.

We’d been trying to find [another riff that goes with it], and it ended up being something we’d tried on several albums, with different ideas, and it just never clicked. And then all of a sudden there it is and it works, and it totally is the complete thing that the other riff needed. I think Adam had that riff when we were trying to write for [1996’s] Aenima album. It just kept getting brought up and put on the side.”

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